‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ prom­ises record turnout

The ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ held a pre-event press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day to an­nounce the launch of Kuwait’s big­gest marathon, which takes place this Satur­day 19 Novem­ber, at 7:00 am from Souq Sharq.

Mo­ham­mad Al-Otaibi, Gulf Bank Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ager said: “We are proud to launch the ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ 2016 for the se­cond con­sec­u­tive year to­gether with our strate­gic part­ner, Pro-Vi­sion Sports Man­age­ment. Last year was a great suc­cess, as we had al­most 2,400 par­tic­i­pant and more than 70 na­tion­al­i­ties rep­re­sented at the event. This year we are ex­pect­ing an even higher turnout, and we en­cour­age you to join the run/walk event. I would like to in­vite all those who haven’t reg­is­tered yet, to do so be­fore 16 Novem­ber by vis­it­ing our web­site www.gulf­bank642­marathon.com.”

Al-Otaibi added: “This year we have part­nered with the United Na­tions High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees and their ‘Voices for Refugee’ pro­gram to raise aware­ness of the plight of refugees and make their sto­ries heard so peo­ple will keep re­mem­ber­ing they are hu­man. Please join their cam­paign and add give your voice, so the world will hear theirs.”

Dr Hanan Ham­dan, Head of Of­fice - UNHCR Kuwait, em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of its part­ner­ship with the ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ by say­ing:” On be­half of UNHCR, I would like to ex­press my grat­i­tude to Gulf Bank for choos­ing the plight of refugees as their cause for this year’s marathon”.

Dr. Ham­dan added:” The goal of our “Voices for Refugees” cam­paign goes be­yond the val­ues of sol­i­dar­ity and sym­pa­thy, we want your voices to raise at­ten­tion and hu­man­i­tar­ian ac­tions, rep­re­sent­ing our unity and hopes for a bet­ter fu­ture to all those who have fled their coun­try due to war atroc­i­ties”.

She also high­lighted UNHCR’s long stand­ing co­op­er­a­tion with the gov­ern­ment of Kuwait and said:” In fact, the State of Kuwait has been one of the top 10 con­trib­u­tors that helped al­le­vi­at­ing the bur­den of the Syr­ian refugees with its do­na­tions amount­ing to $338 mil­lion. We have been work­ing closely with the Kuwaiti gov­ern­ment on var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties aimed at mo­bi­liz­ing re­sources and fund­ing to help Syr­ian refugees who fled their coun­try”.

Ah­mad Al-Huzami, CEO of Pro-Vi­sion Sport Man­age­ment, ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to both the Min­istry of In­te­rior and the Min­istry of Health for their ef­forts and co­op­er­a­tion in mak­ing the marathon a suc­cess, and ex­plained that: “The ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ is a unique run/walk event and the only in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­cred­ited marathon in Kuwait. This year prom­ises to be an even big­ger event, we hope to see you there”.

From his side, Mr. Ah­mad Al-Ma­jed, Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Pro Vi­sion Sport Man­age­ment, stated: “It is our honor to have Gulf Bank as our part­ner. To date we have reg­is­tered over 3,000 par­tic­i­pants from var­i­ous ages across all four-race cat­e­gories, and we are ready to wel­come them on Satur­day. We have par­tic­i­pants com­ing in from the US, Europe, and the GCC to take part in ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’. This event is made for every in­di­vid­ual who wants to ex­pe­ri­ence a run, tour­ing through the beau­ti­ful landmarks of Kuwait.”

From chal­leng­ing ath­letes to be­gin­ners and even fam­i­lies, this Marathon caters to ev­ery­one and in­cludes four dif­fer­ent dis­tances/cat­e­gories: * Fam­ily Fun Walk/Run (5KM) * Souq Run for reg­u­lar run­ners (10KM) * Half Marathon for more ad­vanced run­ners (21KM)

* Full Marathon (42KM)

The route for the race will start at Souq Sharq, at 7:00 am, and will take place on Gulf Road, pass­ing by Kuwait Tow­ers, the Grand Mosque, Al Seif Palace, the Na­tional As­sem­bly, Souk Al Mubarakiya, the Gulf Bank head of­fice, as well as other landmarks.

The ‘Gulf Bank 642 Marathon’ re­mains only road race in Kuwait to have three of its longer dis­tance race cat­e­gories ac­cred­ited by the As­so­ci­a­tion of In­ter­na­tional Marathons and Dis­tance Races (AIMS) and the In­ter­na­tional As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tions (IAAF Ath­let­ics), mean­ing that those races ap­peared in the in­ter­na­tional cal­en­dar of races.

To find out more about the Gulf Bank 642 Marathon, visit the ded­i­cated web­site at: www.gulf­bank642­marathon.com or its In­sta­gram ac­count GulfBank642. The num­ber 642 rep­re­sent the num­ber of mus­cles in the hu­man body.